"OK campers, rise and shine! And don't forget your booties 'cause it's cold out there today!"

The morning we left Flagstaff, we were pulling out of the parking lot after getting gas, and I burst into tears. 

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked. I just shook my head. 

“I don’t even know anymore,” I replied. “I’m OK. Just releasing some pressure.” 

That’s what we call little bouts of quick tears, the ones that come out of nowhere and hit at almost always inopportune times. Sometimes all the feels just build and build and build and the only option is to release some of the pressure by squeezing out a few tears. Most of the time, I’m not even sure what exactly I’m upset about. Not anymore. The upset is always there, really. Just sitting under the surface. 

All this to say…I’m having a hard time adjusting to all of the changes of the past few weeks. Packing up and leaving WA was a whirlwind. It felt like we waited and waited for the departure day to arrive and then, once it got close, time flew by faster than ever. A lot of the time, before we left, I felt numb and just…nothing. This isn’t unusual. Something I’ve discovered over the past year and a half is that sometimes? There’s just too much to feel. So our bodies shut it all down for a bit. Kind of like a computer rebooting. 

The feels started coming as soon as we hit the road, and by then I wasn’t really surprised that I was tired and crying all the time. The movers came on one of my bad chemo days, and then we left that very same day. I thought I’d be fine in the car and I was, really, but it turns out that it’s not super fun to travel when you feel like crap. Add onto that the fact that I never sleep well on the road and you have a recipe for constant tears. We still managed to have fun and see some amazing things (giant trees! A big hole in the ground! RAVENS!) but I had severely underestimated just how much a multi-day road trip would take out of me. Poor Joe was in a similar boat, since he was doing all the driving and battling a sore back the entire time. 

While we had lots of fun (and raven-sightings) on the trip, it wasn’t all sunshine. Sometime after we left the Grand Canyon, which was our last scheduled “fun” stop, we soon entered the part of our drive that was flat and beige and boring, our only remaining goal to make it to Ohio. And as excited as we were about seeing people we love, the reason behind the move is impossible to ignore at the best of times and as we all know, it hasn’t been the best of times for a long while now.  

I haven’t made it a secret that I’ve been having a tough time adjusting to this move, as evidenced from, I don’t know, everything I’ve written about it and my general demeanor most of the time. But I fear that I’ve left the impression that the reason I’m upset is because the PNW is prettier and filled with cooler wildlife than Ohio and while this is true, and leaving all of that DOES make me incredibly sad, it’s not the real reason this is so hard. (And honestly, if one more person tells me that Ohio has cool nature stuff, too, I’m going to lose it because A) I know, I lived here for 30+ years before leaving and B) SEAL SNOOTS.)

The real reason I’m upset is much more complicated but basically boils down to the fact that we wouldn’t have had to move if it weren’t for cancer. This is just one more decision cancer has made for me, one more thing it’s taken away from me, and that list of things is now so long and all-encompassing that, at times, I have a hard time remembering that there’s anything good left. 

I’ve had a couple of really hard days the past few weeks. I should have expected it, I suppose, but it’s taken me by surprise. At one point, a few days after being back, we were in the car (again) and I was fighting off tears from something or another, when I finally figured out WHY I’ve been having such a hard time (other than the obvious answer above). I thought I was just extra miserable here because when we arrived, it was cold and awful and I was exhausted, both physically and mentally. But that’s not really it. I’m experiencing the same level of misery here that I was in Washington, that I’ve been experiencing since this all started, but it was easier to ignore in Washington because I’d learned to live with it. I’d gotten pretty good at finding ways to dig myself out of my depression burrow. I’d learned how to navigate all (or at least most) of the hard things. Because, in Washington, I knew what to expect. 

But now I’ve regressed, back to how I felt immediately after treatment, when I didn’t know how to approach any situation with my new body and issues. When I initially went back to work, I’d cry after disconnecting from every virtual meeting with a new person, someone who knew me Before Cancer. The mention of food, or someone eating in front of me, sent me spiraling into misery town. I’d get frustrated if someone misunderstood something I said, and would sometimes just remain silent because I knew I wouldn’t be able to communicate something well enough to be understood. 

I learned how to navigate it, though. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough that I didn’t want to cry all the time. But now I’m back to square one and I don’t know how anything works here. Especially socializing with other people. Mostly, the thought of seeing other people exhausts me before I’ve even done it. I had another baby breakdown on the way here about this very thing, since most people haven’t seen me in person since all of this happened. 

“I don’t want to be anyone’s cautionary tale,” I sobbed to Joe. “I don’t want people to be like…oh, there goes sad, tragic Jennie, I’m so glad I’m not her.” 

Truth be told, I want, so badly, for things to just be how they used to be. I don’t want to have to live like this. I don’t want to deal with pitying looks on anyone’s face. I don’t want to answer the question “How are you doing/feeling?” for the 8 millionth time (answer: HOW. DO. YOU. THINK.) I don’t want to not be able to just meet people for brunch or go over to someone’s house for dinner. How do you socialize without centering it around food? I can’t ask everyone I know to just…not have parties and go out to eat. I don’t want to not be invited but I also don’t want to go and not be able to participate. I feel like the rest of my life is going to be spent on the periphery, watching other people do the things I used to do, and just learning how to live with it. It’s exhausting. 

So, that’s where I am now. Back to the unknown misery of last year around this time, learning how to live with it all over again, like the worst version of Groundhog Day ever. I don’t know that it’ll get better but at least I know from prior experience that it’ll get easier, that I’ll get better at dealing with it. I suppose there’s some comfort in that. 

And hey…maybe I’ll get a groundhog buddy out of the deal. They are native to Ohio, you know. And they probably already have a burrow I can use.